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Wilbur is actively packing when he feels things change. There’s not much here he wants to keep, so “packing” mostly means putting knickknacks in his jacket pockets, but still.
At first he isn’t quite sure what’s going on—he wonders if this is the “sense of impending doom” that’s a heart attack symptom—but then he gets the same indescribable soul-shift feeling of leaving Limbo and the world kind of dims around him and he decides that he is probably not having a heart attack.
And then, while he’s still trying to get his bearings, he sees Her.
“Kristin?” He’s never seen Her before, but he knows Her immediately, instinctively. “I—I mean, my lady. Lady Death.” He fidgets uncomfortably with his jacket zipper. “Um. Can I help you?”
She laughs kindly at him, Her face crinkling into a smile under Her wide-brimmed hat. “Please, just Kristin is fine. And I was hoping you’d ask that.”
She’s nicer than Wilbur had expected, honestly. Phil always spoke of Her in such glowing terms, but She always sounded kinda spooky to Wilbur. A thought occurs to him. “Am I dead?” He didn’t run into Her last time, but who knows?
She laughs again. “Far from it. In fact, your birthright has finally come to bear. Welcome, my new Angel.”
Um. “What?” Wilbur stares at Her. Wait, is that rude? Oh god. “You mean like Phil?”
“Exactly. Although not like him anymore, I suppose.”
“Wait, is Phil dead?”
“No, he is well.” She frowns slightly. “I believe he is well. He’s abdicated, and the role of Angel passes to you.”
“I’m not even really his son,” Wilbur says, startled. It was cool when a crow took the letter he wrote to a father-figure he wished he had, weird but cool when that father-figure wrote back and then showed up, but Phil was only playing along with Wilbur’s voluntary delusion. It wasn’t real.
Kristin gives him an amused smile. “Really? Why did the crows take your letters, then? You volunteered and were chosen, Angel, whether you knew it or not.”
Well, shit. Wilbur takes a deep breath. “Okay. So Phil’s abdicated, or whatever. And I’m the new Angel of Death?”
Kristin nods.
“Oh my god, I can’t leave,” Wilbur realizes. “If I’m the Angel, I can’t go home.”
“You are home,” Kristin replies with a playful smile.
Phil meant for this to happen, Wilbur’s sure. Phil wouldn’t give up being Angel for no reason; he loved it. He must have noticed Wilbur’s little goodbye tour and decided to put a stop to it. “That bastard,” Wilbur says aloud, surprising himself. “He trapped me.”
“He loves you,” Kristin says. “Can you blame him?”
“Yes, I can. I absolutely can.”
Kristin shrugs. “What’s done is done.”
“Fine,” Wilbur bites out. “I’m the Angel, then. What the hell am I meant to do now?”
“Observe,” Kristin tells him. “Death is coming to this server much sooner than you think. You must stay, and observe, and usher the souls along.”
A stone forms in the pit of Wilbur’s stomach. “I know these people,” he whispers. “And now I have to watch them die?”
Kristin’s expression goes cold. “It is your responsibility as the Angel.”
Wilbur sighs. “Right. Anything else?”
Kristin gives him another of Her playful, irreverent smiles. “If you like that jacket, you might want to take it off before I return you to real time. I hear the wings can be a lot at first.”
Wilbur blinks at Her. “Sorry, the—” The soul-shift feeling comes again, She vanishes, and before he can finish his question white-hot pain lances down his back.
Of course, he thinks dimly. The wings.